


The Other Side of the Story

by creatureofhobbit



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-30
Updated: 2015-07-30
Packaged: 2018-04-12 03:58:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4464617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creatureofhobbit/pseuds/creatureofhobbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles and Theo's childhood rivalry over Scott escalates into their mutual dislike today, plus how Theo's sister really died.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Other Side of the Story

There was a part of Stiles that could hear in his head how ridiculous it all must sound to Scott. But a larger part of him knew that he was right, there was something off about Theo. The first part of him understood why they didn’t believe him. Back in grade school, when Scott, Stiles and Theo had supposedly all been in the same group of friends, even then Stiles and Theo had never been close, each of them wanting Scott’s friendship for himself and wishing the other out of the way. 

Scott had known how they felt, and kept on trying to persuade each of them of the good qualities of the other. His dad, well, Stiles had talked to him about it at the time, but it was about then when his mother had first started getting sick and of course his dad was too worried about her to pay attention to Stiles’s issues with Theo. He’d barely known Lydia then, and when he’d asked her she said she couldn’t really remember Theo, while Malia, Kira and Liam hadn’t known him at all. So Stiles could see how it sounded crazy to them all. But even though he and Theo had never been real friends back then and only hung out for Scott’s sake, Stiles hadn’t thought back then that Theo was truly evil, not the way he seemed to be now.

Theo had joined their class at the start of third grade and had been given the seat next to Scott. Scott had immediately bonded with him, and Stiles had tried to like him, but after a while he’d begun feeling that Theo was trying to push him out of the picture and keep Scott for himself. At first things had been fine, but over time it had started with Theo saying things like “Sorry, Stiles, my parents will only let me have one friend over today,” which just went on to happen more and more often.

Then had come the day of the lacrosse trials. Scott had talked all day about how great it would be if the three of them made the team. Stiles hadn’t dared get his hopes up at first, especially with the likes of Jackson Whittemore around probably doing their best to keep them off. But as the trials went on, he began getting his hopes up that maybe he stood a chance. Finally, it was his turn to take a shot at the goal. As Stiles prepared to take his position, he suddenly felt a sharp push to his back and found himself sent sprawling to the floor.

“Sorry, man.” Theo stood before him. “It was an accident.”

“Sure it was,” Stiles had snapped, turning angrily away from him.

“Honestly, it was,” Scott had tried to explain. “Jackson was messing about, and he bumped into Theo. Theo didn’t mean to knock you over.”

Stiles hadn’t said any more at the time, but when Coach Adams posted the list of those who had made the cut, and Scott and Theo were on there while Stiles wasn’t even a substitute, Theo had turned round, smirked at Stiles as he said “Better luck next time.”

In that moment, Stiles hated Theo Raeken.

Scott had kept on trying to persuade Stiles that Theo wasn’t all bad, that if he just gave him a chance, spent a bit more time with him, he might get to like him. That was just like Scott. He always saw the best in people. So Stiles agreed that he’d give Theo one more chance, went to him and invited him to the birthday sleepover he’d originally intended would just be for him and Scott. And he was surprised at how well things went at the time, that for once he and Theo seemed to be getting along. Maybe Scott was right, maybe Theo was okay after all.

Then the evening after the sleepover, Deputy Stilinski had come home from work with some news.

“It’s your friend Theo’s sister, Jennifer. She was found dead out by the bridge this morning. She’d sneaked out last night, she must have got lost.”

Scott and Stiles had attended the funeral to support Theo, but he’d been unable to even look at them; keeping his head bowed as he sat with his family, never once glancing in their direction. He distanced himself from them and from everyone at school as well in those last few weeks before his family eventually moved away. Scott had tried writing to him a few times, but Theo had never replied to him. In the end Scott had given up, and his mother had told him that when Theo was ready, he would make contact with him again, but Scott was better leaving it for now. Stiles hadn’t attempted to contact him at all, not knowing what to say that wouldn’t make things worse. Over time, Scott mentioned Theo less and less. Things were back to how they had been before, Scott and Stiles, best friends. Stiles barely gave Theo a thought in the intervening years, but if he ever did, he found that he’d let a lot of that old anger go.

Until the day when Theo came back into their lives. Scott seemed able to accept him as being the same Theo who he’d been friends with all that time ago, but when Stiles looked at him, he sensed something off, something evil in a way he’d never sensed even when the rivalry between the two had been at its height. And okay, maybe Scott had been right to trust Derek, and the twins, and Liam had turned out to be okay when they all got to know him. But Stiles had been right about not trusting Peter, and he knew he was right about Theo, too. All he had to do was watch, wait for him to slip up, which Stiles had no doubt he would.

It wasn’t about some stupid rivalry any more. It was about protecting them all.

 

It hadn’t been a lie what Theo had said. He’d come back for Scott and Stiles, all right.

And it technically hadn’t been a lie what Theo had said about why. When they were kids together, Theo had always admired the way that Stiles would have done anything to protect his friends. And Stiles always seemed to know the right thing to do as well. He remembered the time when Scott’s mother had thrown his father out and Scott hadn’t really understood why. Theo had tried to talk to Scott about it, and Scott hadn’t wanted to know. Then along had come Stiles with his impersonations of their third grade teacher, his chat about sports teams and his babble about whether Lydia Martin would ever notice him, and next thing Theo knew, Scott was smiling again. Stiles and his distraction had achieved what Theo and his attempts to understand couldn’t, despite Theo really having tried. 

At first, a part of him had even kind of liked Stiles, although it didn’t last long. Theo knew Stiles would have preferred it if he had Scott all to himself, much as Stiles would be nice to his face, and it got to the point where Theo found that he would have preferred having Scott to himself too. And things had got worse after the lacrosse incident. It had happened just the way Scott said; Theo genuinely hadn’t tried to trip him up, it had been an accident caused by Jackson bumping into him. But Stiles was determined to believe that Theo had done it deliberately. After a while, Theo just stopped trying to explain. But there was a part of him that was relieved that Stiles hadn’t made the cut, that he could have Scott all to himself at the games, and travelling there. Okay, so Stiles usually turned out to support Scott, but he didn’t get to spend time with him, not like Theo did. 

No one else seemed to see it apart from Theo. Even his stupid sister Jennifer seemed to like Stiles. A year older, she and Theo went from being inseparable one minute to fighting like cat and dog the next. In one of their phases where they were fighting, Theo had overheard Jennifer and Stiles talking about ways they could prank him, one of which had involved Jennifer waiting until he’d gone to sleep and then sneaking out of the house, tapping on his window and scaring him. At the time, Theo had pretended he hadn’t heard, thinking that if she ever tried it he’d just find some way to scare her back, and that was the end of it at the time. But he remembered it all too well afterwards.

Stiles had come to him not long before Scott’s ninth birthday, saying that he thought Scott still needed cheering up after his parents had split up and did Theo think it was a good idea if the two of them took him for a sleepover for his birthday. “How about it? Camping out overnight in the woods...just us, his two best friends.”

“You really want me there?” Theo had asked, and Stiles had said “Course I do. Scott will want us both there.” Theo had wondered then whether maybe he had Stiles all wrong. If the idea for the birthday slumber party had occurred to him, he would probably have only suggested it to Scott, and only reluctantly invited Stiles once Scott had insisted. But Stiles had wanted Theo there, even if more for Scott’s sake than his own. Maybe Stiles really wasn’t trying to push him out.

And to Theo’s surprise, he actually found himself having a good time with the guy on the night of the sleepover. Stiles seemed to have given up on this stupid competition they’d been having over Scott, he was trying to make sure Theo was included in everything, he’d made sure he talked to Theo beforehand about what they were getting Scott for his birthday to make sure they both got something he liked, without trying to outdo each other as they would have done once. As they’d told ghost stories, Theo began to wonder if maybe there was a chance that the two of them could be friends after all.

But then when he got home, he found his parents waiting for him.

“Have you seen Jennifer? We woke up and she was gone. She must have sneaked out of the house. She didn’t find you and your friends?”

Theo shook his head, confused. “I haven’t seen her since I set off for the sleepover. She’s not been with me. Why would she be? We had that big fight before I left, remember?”

“Then where the hell is she?”

 

They found her out by the bridge.

The official version telling people was that Jennifer had died of “exposure”, whatever that meant. His father’s bosses had fixed it to cover up what had really happened, that when they had found Jennifer, she had obviously been attacked by some animal or other. His father wasn’t too happy about it, but was going along with it. Sooner or later someone was bound to question it. It was August, after all, who the hell froze to death in August?

At first, Theo couldn’t understand why Jennifer had even been out there in the first place. Then he remembered that conversation she had had with Stiles ages ago about her wanting to scare him. Her last words to him had been something about how she was going to get him. She’d obviously decided that since he was camping in the woods that was the best time to do it, tried to get to where they were camping but hadn’t made it there.

It would never have happened if Stiles hadn’t put the idea in her head. Jennifer was dead because of him.

He’d even had the cheek to turn up at the funeral, and Scott was sat there next to him. Scott must have known what had happened, that Stiles had given Jennifer the idea, and he still chose to sit there with him. Theo couldn’t even look at either of them, especially Stiles. The one thing that kept him going throughout the service was the thought that one day, Theo would find a way of getting his revenge on Stiles. 

Scott had tried writing to Theo when the family first moved away, but Theo just ripped the letters up. There was nothing that Scott could say that would make things any better. A few weeks after the family had moved away, Theo had a letter from Scott telling him that Stiles’s mother had died, and Theo wondered briefly if Stiles was feeling the way that he’d felt after Jennifer died. But that wasn’t enough for him. One day, he’d find a way to take something from Stiles the way Stiles had taken Jennifer from him.

He thought about that now as he plotted with the Dread Doctors, as he encouraged Donovan to get his revenge on Sheriff Stilinski through Stiles, as he flirted with Malia. There was nothing he could do about the wolf that had bitten Jennifer. That wolf was dead; he’d found that out from the wolf from the Alpha pack. But he could take everything from Stiles.

_Jennifer, this is for you._


End file.
